Monday, September 8, 2014

Last week in Randel Plowman's online collage course our project was to make little artist books. One of the suggested topics was birds. I have a few drawers of monoprints from my gelli plate.. so i decided these would make great feathers, the collage below was created entirely from my gelli prints. Not even the tricky ones either, just pretty much straight block colour tone on tone.

i scanned it in, enlarged part of it and created an accordian style book 3x4 inches

inside

Every time I hear a kookaburra 'laugh' i am reminded of the song that children learn in primary school, "kookaburra sits in the old gum tree, merry merry king of the bush is he, laugh kookaburra laughso i added some hand lettering too.

reverse, far right panel is cover

More lovely gelli plate printed textures.. ready for some more embellishment - or just yummy bits of colour echoing nature...

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Have you heard of makeitindesign? started by Beth Kempton and Rachael Taylor, it's a fantastic resource if you enjoy surface design, colour/pattern - and finding out more about it all! They also produce Moyo magazine which you can download for free here.

Over the last few weeks i participated in their free summer school - which meant tackling a 'beginner' and intermediate brief. Unfortunately i was busy with the day job, and errr ..that collage course, BUT i really wanted to just see what i could come up with and enjoyed participating in a community made up of creative folk around the world. Here's how it went.

For the tropical brief.. i scanned in my collage bits..

Geometrics i worked with some of my gelli- monoprints and attempted putting it in a garment.

Next was tribal, so played around with a few shapes + textures

Decided on this one...

Then it was 'animal print' my least favourite, i think because the given palette was not my thing. Although in reflection i could've dropped a colour. But, then again i was moving out of that comfort zone, embracing pattern clash - to see what happened!

Final submission

the last brief was: Jewels, not my thing AT ALL, but embarked on watercolour gems.

I think i took this too literally and would've liked more time to explore another angle..

I did alter digitally a wee bit for the final submission

Lastly i got out the watercolours for some feathers..

which i decided should float..

perhaps it suited the application...

Anyway - it was a whirlwind of patterns - but nothing like a focus and deadline to get you moving.